Tag Archives: Story

Pulp Western Story: Shanks

Posted by Grim Jim on

This is an early draft of the first part of a story in my collection Pulp Nova.

He walks, this man, in a country where people ride or take the rails. He places one foot in front of the other at a steady pace, following the trail that other men and horses have made. He steps around the piles of horseshit with a nimble step, almost a dancer, hopping from one foot to another with an assured stride and an almost childish joy.

He strikes a strange figure, this one, especially for the plains, especially on foot. He wears a fine grey suit and a bowler hat beneath the dust. Despite the beating sun, he doesn’t seem to sweat. Any sane man would dress light, cover himself with a duster, and wear something tough like denim. Not this man. His only concessions to the task at hand are a walking cane – of all things – and a pair of sturdy boots. At his neck is a cravat of silk and, unlike any other man you’ll meet in this untamed land, he is shaven cleanly, save for his impressively carved sideburns.

Every step kicks up dust and turns the grey of his suit brown up to the knees. His heavy satchel hangs at his side, threatening to pull him over, but it just sets him at a jaunty angle, like his hat. A simple bowler lacks a brim to keep the sun from his eyes, and surprisingly smooth skin is tanned a deep brown from which steel grey eyes sparkle with a permanent tweak of mirth.

He stops when a rock breaks the monotony of the plains and pauses to rest his feet, sitting on its sun-warmed surface for a drink of tepid water and to scrunch his toes in his boots. America’s big, and it’s a long, long way to walk. It pays for a man to take his time, especially if he is doing it to take in the sights rather than travelling for any reason.

Something catches his eye, and he turns, spitting a mouthful of dusty water to the side and dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief. There was dust rising on the horizon, further up the trail. A column of it rose into the air above the red and brown of the grasses. The wind whipped the grass in waves, and it reminded him, strangely, of the smoke rising from the steamers on the Atlantic. He doubted it was a steamer, though, not on dry land. More likely, some horses, going pretty fast from the amount of dust.

He wasn’t going to outrun whoever it was, and there was no telling who or what they were, so there was no point worrying about it. He took another sip of water and slid his pack from his shoulder, setting his cane to the side with it and pulling on his kid-skin gloves from his pocket. It couldn’t hurt to be a little careful.

The column of dust got closer and closer until it resolved itself into two horses, riding along the trail, side by side. He shielded his eyes against the sun and squinted, carefully. Two men, broad hats and dusters, bulging saddlebags. They were riding hard, but they seemed to slow when they spotted him, walking the horses until they came into range of conversation.

“Howdy,” the man who spoke wore a broad brown hat. His shirt was stained yellow with sweat and dust, and a red kerchief hung around his neck. There was a pistol on each hip, and he was wary, pushing his duster back behind the holsters and turning his horse side on.

The second man was a Mexican by the look of him, swarthy and heavily moustachioed with the long points of his lip-brush dangling down to his collar. A bandoleer of shotgun shells crossed his chest, and there was a shotgun and a Winchester in the two long sleeves at the front of his saddle.

“Good day to you,” the man on the rock spoke, tipping his hat slightly. The clipped and superior tones of a clear British accent making him seem even more alien and outlandish in such a setting.

“Jesuscristo, I never heard someone talk like that,” exclaimed the Mexican, laughing and leaning forward in his saddle.

“Me neither,” the pistoleer muttered and spat a brown stream of tobacco onto the grass. “Where you from, Mister?”

“Civilisation,” said the man with a smile. “London, England.”

“British, huh? Don’t know that I cotton to redcoats, Mister.”

“Now, now, that was a long time ago. You chaps were killing each other more recently than that.”

The man with the pistols shrugged and cast his glance this way and that before turning back to the gentleman on the rock. “Where’s your horse, hoss?”

“My horse? Oh, it’s not my horse, it’s Shanks’ pony,” the Englishman grinned and tapped his hand against his legs.

“Then you’d be Shanks,” the pistoleer’s horse sidestepped a little closer with a kick at its side, tossing its head but seeming to appreciate the chance to rest.

“Well, I suppose I am. What would be your chaps’ names?”

“I am Xavier…” the Mexican answered before the man with the pistols waved him quiet.

“You not wearing any iron, Mister Shanks?” the pistoleer urged his horse a little closer again, hooves kicking up dust as it pranced in annoyance.

“I didn’t really see the need,” the gentleman shrugged and slipped off the rock to stand, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat from which a pair of watch chains depended and swung, gleaming silver in the sun.

“And whut’s in the bag?” the Mexican was staying quiet now, but looking nervous, glancing from Shanks to his friend and back again.

“My tools. I’m a watchmaker, just a hobby, you understand? That and my money,” Shanks smiled and rocked on his heels, quirking an eyebrow as he watched the man’s reaction.

“Money, huh?” The pistoleer’s hand darted and drew his Colt, levelling it at Shanks, eyes narrowed like a hawk stooping for the kill. “Reckon a man as finely dressed as you has less need of his dollars and cents than men like us, down on our luck.”

Shanks kept his hands in his pockets and gently shrugged his shoulders, that supercilious smile never leaving his face. “I dare say you’re right, Sir, but it would still be theft.”

The Mexican was even more nervous now, shifting in his saddle, licking his lips at the confrontation. He could see that Shanks wasn’t perturbed, anxious, not so much as a bead of sweat on his brow. “Jon, I don’t know about this man. Something’s wrong.”

“Shut up, Xavier. Now then, Mr Redcoat, how about we start with those fine watches of yours? I know a man in Waco that’ll pay a fine amount of dollars for Stirling silver.” He thumbed back the hammer on his pistol and renewed his aim, hand as steady as a rock.

“I commend you, Jon, you know your silver. As you will then…”

Shanks dipped his hands deeper into the pockets of his waistcoat and drew them out with blinding speed. Light danced briefly on a pair of silver-plated pocket revolvers, Webleys, attached by the long chains to the buttons of the waistcoat. There was a double boom and a cloud of smoke as they went off together, and the heavy .450 bullets took Jon through his eyes and flung him back from his horse into the dust in a shower of blood.

Xavier sat up, bolt straight in his saddle and stared at the Englishman whose gleaming silvered guns were now aimed with deadly precision at his own face, the hammers already back, he hadn’t even seen him re-cock the gun. “I don’t want any trouble, Mr Shanks. I didn’t want to rob you.”

“Good chap, Xavier. Why don’t you ride along them, hmm? I’m sure you have places to be. Don’t worry about Jon here, I’ll take care of him, or at least the buzzards will.”

Xavier nodded hard, his hat falling back from its head on its ties, and he kicked his horse into life, fleeing down the trail as fast as he could. The fear of god chasing him like the cavalry itself was on his heels.

Shanks watched him go and eased the hammers down on his pistols, pushing them into his pockets and smoothing the line of his suit. Jon’s horse was placidly eating grass now, seemingly glad to have less weight on its back. Shanks approached it gingerly and rifled through the saddlebags. Not a lot of use, jerky, pemmican, a little water, a handful of dollars and thievings that were of no interest to him.

“You’re bloody lucky I didn’t shoot you. Can’t stand horses.” The creature paid him no heed until he slapped it on the flank and sent it running away down the trail in Xavier’s wake.

Jon’s body didn’t have a lot to offer either, just chewing tobacco – a foul habit – and a few more dollars to add to the collection. Shanks left him there, staring blindly up at the sky through two bloody holes, a warning to other would-be thieves. Americans, so uncivilised.

He paced back to the rock and lifted his pack, pushing it back over his shoulder and snatching up his cane with a spinning flourish. It shouldn’t be too far to the next town, if his reckoning was correct. Might even get there by sundown.

Whistling a happy tune, Shanks sauntered on as the buzzards wheeled and landed behind him in a raucous party, fighting over his leavings.

Story: Wild

Posted by Grim Jim on

This is the first part of a story that appears in Pulp Nova.

THOCK!

The machete blade bit into the succulent green of the tree and stuck fast. White rubbery goop seeped out of the trunk and gummed around the blade, already sticky. Every time he cut, Bernard had to stop, wipe the goo from the blade and start over. The trees here were too big, too dense, to cut through, and the undergrowth was all this rubbery tangle. The stuff smelled like a mix of school glue and semen, which really wasn’t that pleasant at all.

He stopped and rubbed the gluey mix from the blade, turning to look to the rest of his team. Christ was a local doctor and bore the joke-making of his name with remarkable stoicism. He wasn’t that good at cutting through the undergrowth, but with all these blades flying about, you wanted someone who was a dab hand with a needle. Divine, French-educated, Congolese by birth, was a scientist like him. Her shock of dark, curly hair was yanked back into a tight braid. She was strong, drenched with sweat as she clove away at the undergrowth with the rest of them. Ray and Fred, their guards, all he’d gotten out of them were their first names. They didn’t deign to help chop, but that wasn’t their job. They scanned the dense jungle – even though they couldn’t see very far at all, AK-47s slung back over their shoulders.

Fred had his boots off, hung around his neck, and walked barefoot over fallen tree trunks and deep leaf litter. Bernard looked down at the mass of crawling insects, thorns and other creatures around his boots and shook his head. You wouldn’t catch him doing that. Far too many scorpions, centipedes, ants, snakes and other stinging, venomous, poisonous creatures waiting for a nice chunk of prime Belgian flesh.

“Mr Vandenbosch!” Divine’s heavily accented French called from the side of the little trail they’d been cutting. It was damn slow going.

“Yes, Miss Kayembe?” he stopped and turned, wiping his brow; the sweat never stopped flowing down into his eyes.

“I think I’ve found one of the plants that were in the report,” she said, hunkered down now, the hacking replaced by a gentle parting of the foliage.

Bernard carefully paced over to her, leaving the Doctor to make what little headway he could by himself against the combative plant life. There, between Divine’s calloused fingers, was a tiny little flower, four-petalled, delicate, but the scent was strong. Just as had been described. This was why he was here: the area was relatively unexplored, and the potential for new pharmaceuticals synthesised from the plant life of these regions was enormous.

“There’s another one…” Divine parted the rubbery undergrowth, and there was a treasure-house of the little flowers, their antiseptic smell suddenly making the jungle smell like a doctor’s waiting room.

“So many… I wonder why nothing’s eating them.” Bernard reached back into his pack and fished out a sample jar and a trowel, stabbing it into the dirt to work out one of the little white jewels and its roots.

“We’re in the right place at least!” Divine smiled a broad white smile and held back the plants as Bernard dug around the roots, brushing aside the dried husks of dead insects to reach the loamy soil beneath.

A bare foot, thick with rough skin, appeared next to him as he dug, and he looked up, blinking to Fred, standing over him and sucking his teeth. “It’s getting dark quick, Mr Vandenbosch. We need to find a place to make camp.”

Bernard nodded and lifted the plant into its container, screwing on the lid. He turned to Divine as she stood, knees cracking as she did so. “Make a note of the location on the GPS so we can get back here at first light. I’m going to want a few more samples.”

Divine nodded and took her tablet out of her cargo shorts. She tapped at it with the stylus and then abruptly stopped, giving a strange and sudden grunt. Bernard stood, immediately, staring at her as she dropped her tablet and lifted her hand to her chest. A scarlet stain was spreading across her vest, soaking through the fabric. Her knees began to buckle, and she tried to form a word, blood trickling from her lips, before she was yanked back and up, arms and legs thrown forward, her body hauled out of sight into the leaves and the trees.

“Merde!” Fred and Ray unslung their guns and worked the bolts. There was a whooshing sound and Bernard saw a golden blade, like a broad spear tip, pierce Christ’s head, emerging through his mouth in a shower of gore and then yanking back, taking his head off above his mandible and spraying gore over the leaves as his body fell back.

The rattle of the AKs was deafening, even if he was used to the sounds of battle, and Bernard hunkered low, arms over his head against the sound as Fred and Ray opened fire, blind, into the jungle around them. The stink of gunsmoke took over now, and hot brass fell all around him like rain, bullets tearing up the jungle, blowing red-hot splinters of fractured wood into the air.

It was brief and deafening, over as quickly as it started, spent magazines dropped in their haste to reload, slamming them home and knocking them to shake the bullets into place.

“Stay down, Mr Vandenbosch,” Fred half crouched to press a hand against Bernard’s shoulder and then crept, hunched over, a metre – perhaps two – down the trail.

Bernard scrambled for his machete – better than nothing – he couldn’t root in his pack, there was too much going on. “Klootzaks…” he hissed under his breath, scrabbling, putting his back to a tree trunk for cover.

There was a single shot from Ray, a bright flare against the darkening jungle and then he too was gone, pulled into the undergrowth with barely a chance to scream. There was only Fred left. Barefoot Fred, creeping down the trail, eyes to the canopy, big and white and alert.

Fred didn’t see it, though. The giant shadow, more ape than man. Sleek and bald and dark as night, naked as a newborn. Bernard only saw it because of the golden gleam of its spear in the waning light. It was walking down the side of one of the great trees, long toes wrapped around the trunk, silent for something seven feet tall. Bernard tried to open his mouth, tried to shout, to scream, but nothing would come. The great black shadow dropped silently down behind Fred and, with one massive hand, twisted his head on his shoulders until the blank white eyes were staring back at Bernard.

“Merde!” Bernard found his voice now, scrambling for his pack, tearing it open as more of the shadows slipped down from the trees, hulking brutes, muscled and sleek as leopards, fanged teeth showing in toothy grins. “What the fuck are you?”

They stepped closer, closer, loosening those strange short spears in their hands, each attached to a golden chain, wrapped around their bulging forearms. This was it. He was going to die. He couldn’t get his gun out in time. It was wedged beneath the laptop, the sample pots, all the useless paraphernalia of science. He was dead, dead, dead.

“IAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIA!” A banshee scream came out of the jungle and made itself heard, even through the deafness from the gunshots. A white streak came rocketing out of the dense jungle and smashed into one of the great black giants, carrying it over to the ground with sheer momentum. There was a flash of gold and a fount of blood, and only then would his eyes focus.

Straddling one of the dead giants was a girl, white as a ghost, naked as her enemy, her hair a shock of gleaming white dreadlocks. She was unadorned save for a belt and necklace of gold, and now her white body was smeared with red blood that matched the feral gleam of her eyes. She stood on the fallen giant and screamed at its brothers that same deafening ululation. “IAIAIIAIAIAIAIA!”

The giant shadows took a step back, and one swung up its spear, hurling it with terrible might towards the wiry girl. She moved like a snake, twisted and snatched the spear by its haft, yanking it forward with such brutal force that the chain stripped the skin from the giant’s forearms and sent it screaming and bubbling to its knees with pain.

The last turned and ran. It leapt into the trees with unnatural speed, hands and feet gripping together, propelling it into the deepening dark and the thick of the wilderness away from the ghost that had killed its fellows.

The red and white demon girl stepped down from the body and casually stabbed the whimpering, kneeling giant through the top of his skull with her curved golden dagger. Yanking it free with the same casual ease and leaving the body to fall into the rotting loam. The blade went away, clinging to her belt as she slunk with cat-like, careful grace and crouched before Bernard, offering him her bloodied hand.

He gladly took her hand and let her lift him to his feet. She was as tall as him, a six-foot Amazon of a girl, broad-hipped, red-eyed, flat of nose with a sumptuous mouth that formed no words. She simply led him, silently, by the hand, and he went, gladly.

Writing: Stane – Dead & Gone

Posted by Grim Jim on

This is part one of a story, all of which is collected in Pulp Nova.

An Englishman’s home is his castle. It’s a phrase that’s overused to the point of driving me to fits of rage, but there’s a kernel, a smidge, a chewy centre of truth to it. You don’t talk shit about a geezer’s home any more than you would dare raise your voice about the way a woman raises her kids. If you do either of these things, however deserved, you’re going to get a fucking slap. You’re also going to be ignored, so he whole bloody exercise is pointless from the get-go. You can only get away with either faux pas if you’re a close friend or family member, and even then, there’s going to be bitter resentment for months and a lot of hard, silent stares. The kind that can peel paint.

The thing about being a policeman, even a detective inspector, is that the money’s shit and everybody hates you. You can’t afford a good gaff, which means you end up living around the scum that hate you the most. Most have more sense than to fuck with you, but they wouldn’t be scum if they had a lick of sense.

If you’ve got a shit house, or in my case, a flat in a leftover, Stalinist block of concrete, you’ve got little motivation to keep it clean and tidy. If you’re single – and a lot of coppers are – you’ve got no extra income and even less inclination to keep the place tidy. Compound that with being a drunk and having a reputation for getting other officers killed, and it goes some way to explaining the state of the place.

I’m not making excuses, I’m just offering an explanation. There’s no excuse, I just, really, can’t be fucked keeping the place tidy, and that’s nobody’s business but mine. That’s why there’s washing up on every flat surface and dirty laundry everywhere there isn’t washing up. That’s why there’s a clear foot of mould growing out of the mug on the kitchen windowsill – I call her Ermintrude – and why that stack of pizza boxes is arranged like a card house.

Hey, a bloke gets bored when he can’t afford Sky, and there’s fuck all on the telly but ‘I’m A No-Talent Cunt, Get me a Career’.

So, to recap: Policeman, shitty house, no money.

Imagine my surprise, then, to wake up at 3:20 am to some fucking chav scumbag clambering in through my kitchen window. Ermintrude didn’t survive the experience, I’m sad to say, joining a long line of partners and assistants to die around me and feeding the ‘legend’ of DI Stane. She didn’t die for nothing, though. The smash woke me up from my slumber on the couch with a start.

The street light shines right in my kitchen window, and without even pulling off the blanket and rolling out onto my pile of socks, I could see what the twat had done. He’d tried to climb in through the kitchen window and gotten himself stuck. I could see his silhouette in black and orange against the wall. There was no rush.

I swung my legs off the couch and peeled my bare skin off the worn leather with a sound like tearing Velcro. There was a rattle and a clang as he tried to free himself, but I think his expensive trainers were stuck in the swampy sink. How the fuck do these kids afford them anyway? I fumbled for my cigs and tossed one into my mouth, snapping it out of the air and lighting it with a match, since my fucking lighter had gone walkabout again. I used to be a pack-a-day man, but these days I’m on two packs of Silk Cut. That doesn’t actually count as smoking, right?

I scratched my arse and wandered through to the kitchen, and yep, there he was. A greasy little hoodie thug ticking all the boxes of the disadvantaged underclass who make it so fucking hard to feel sorry for them.

“Oi, cunt.”

His head turned, and he rattled and twisted in the window, desperately, knocking my Mr Men tea mug out of the sink to smash amongst the remains of dear departed Ermintrude.

“Christ, bruv, at least put some fucking pants on, innit?”

I took a tug on the cigarette and plugged my kettle in, clicked it on to heat up, and then I turned back to the little scrote. “You break into my house and tell me what to wear, you little shit? I don’t fucking think so.”

I reached for my moby, which I keep in my bread bin, obviously. I flipped open the lid and hauled it out, thumbing the keylock and squinting in the sudden light from the screen. “Fucking things. You’d think they’d make it come up slowly so you don’t get blinded.”

“Like I give a shit. What are you doing anyway?” He struggled again, rattling the window and dislodging a couple of forks coated in dried-on spaghetti hoops to clatter on the tiles.

“Calling the police. People still do that,” I fumbled with the screen, shitty fucking smart phones never work right, but at least mine doesn’t talk to me. It rang before I could dial, though. It figured. I rolled my eyes and hit the little green thing that lets you pick up a call. “Stane. It’s three in the fucking morning, so this better not be about double glazing.”

It wasn’t.

“Stane, we need you on an MIT. We’ve got a murder that you’re uniquely suited to dealing with.”

I sighed and took out my frustration by stabbing the shithead in my sink with a fork.

“Fuck man, that’s my arse! You’re a mentalist!”

“That your boyfriend Stane?”

“Never you fucking mind. I’m on leave, remember?” I gave the shithead an extra stab for squealing.

“Nobody else wants it, and I know you. You’ve only got the work.”

“I don’t work alone, DCI Baker, you know that.”

“No fucker will work with you. You’ll have to make do with the forensics people. Look, nobody gives two shits about this case, we just need to show willing for the press and the brass.”

Batman, wise but made-up geezer that he is, tells us that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. They haven’t got anything on cops. Just because three people who’ve worked closely with me have ended up dying, none of these cowardly bastards will work with me any more. Baker must have been desperate to pull me in.

“Alright, alright, give me the fucking details.”

I tossed the fork back into the sink between the kids’ feet and wiped my hand over the whiteboard on the fridge, jotting down the address as Baker read it out over the line to me. “Right, guv, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Don’t call me guv, you cheeky fuck,” he rang off, and I put the phone back down on the counter.

The kettle was boiling now, rattling away in its cradle and giving a loud ‘snap’ as it automatically switched off. “It’s your lucky day, shithead. I’m too busy to deal with you.”

“What do you mean?” He wiggled again, rattling the window, jostling the precarious pile of filthy pots, pans, plates and cutlery in the sink.

“Look. Just fuck off.”

“I’m stuck.”

“You’re not stuck, shithead. You’re just lacking motivation,” I yanked the bubbling, rumbling kettle from its cradle and moved over to where he was hung, half in, half out of the kitchen.

“What? You wouldn’t man, that’s torture!” He rattled more, twisting and writhing and knocking another poor mug onto the floor.

“Hey, I’m the one with his John Thomas swinging in the breeze, you little shit. If it splashes onto me, I’m going to be in more pain than you are.” I lifted the kettle and tipped it slowly, pouring a slow stream of boiling, steaming water next to him.

“Fuck man! Fuck! Fuck!” He wormed around, desperately, and I let the boiling water touch his leg. He screamed at a pitch only dogs can hear and suddenly seemed to get his motivation, jack-knifing like a drunken truck driver and falling out of the window face-first onto the balcony.

I watched him scramble up and run and found myself a clean(ish) mug to make a cup of tea. I was going to need it.

“Right then. Suppose I’d better get some fucking trousers on before I save the world.”

Tea, t-shirt, trousers, phone, coat, bugger the socks, shoes, fresh cig and out the door. Into the wee, small hours and the dark. Off to see some poor murdered cunt.

Oh, the glamorous fucking life of the policeman.

NSFW Short Story: Made of This

Posted by Grim Jim on

This had been provisionally accepted for an anthology on the theme of ‘succubi’ but fell at the last hurdle. Given the currently nebulous future of erotic publishing, even though this isn’t transgressive and is more about the figurative rather than the literal succubus, I present it here for you to read if you’re so inclined. Needless to say, adult material and all that.

I stare into the gaze of the hollow-eyed man. Rangy, thin and pale, he doesn’t look well, but he does look focused. There’s a yearning there, a determination, a hint of fire and passion that his appearance doesn’t reflect. His hair hangs around his shoulders, tangled and clinging to a body that stubbornly refuses to give in, like his mind. His face bristles with whiskers, grown over weeks, unkempt tufts sticking out here and there as it transitions from the mere ‘unshaven’ to the ‘beard’.

I raise my hand to my chin and pull it down, over my mouth, stroking through that rough growth.

The man in the mirror does the same.

I let the water run until it is warm, not hot. Cold or hot would stir me awake, and that is the last thing that I want.  Then I wouldn’t be able to see her for a while. The warm water tastes foul, who knows how long it has been lurking in the hot water tank, but it quenches my thirst and makes me feel more alive, more capable, more human.

Every day, I dream her a little closer, and I see her a little longer. Every day she seems… she feels a little more real. Like Lady Luck, she cannot be courted, cannot be invoked, cannot be summoned and cannot be relied upon. She must just be allowed to come in her own time, on her own terms and in her own way.

The water is hot now, spiralling away into the sink. I soak the flannel in it, rubbing soap against its rough surface until it froths. Then I wash. I turn my arms this way and that, run the warm cloth under my armpits, cleaning away the stale sweat she leaves me with. Water drips down my downy chest and trickles lower, over my belly. The delicate tickle of its passage makes me think of her caresses, and I bite my lip at the memory until it hurts, a shiver moving through my cock as the memory comes alive and the flesh follows the mind.

I push the flannel lower and wrap its damp warmth around me like echoes of her soaking heat. I lift my heavy, aching balls and lather them, making myself clean for her. Weighing that twitching shaft in my hand, I stroke it, groaning at the feeling, the warmth, the wetness, the slickness of the soap.

I stop…

I want her, not the memory of her. If I come, she won’t. I ache with need, and my fist moves of its own accord, wrapping around me and pushing down, but it’s her I want. I lean against the cold smoothness of the sink and give a guttural groan of abject frustration. My own touch feels good, but it’s nothing compared to hers, and so, by sheer force of will, I stop. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, using the pain to distract me from the growing throb between my legs.

I toss the flannel aside with a wet slap and a spray of droplets. Then I turn, naked and uncaring, pacing, ungainly from the swollen, heavy rod between my legs. I catch sight of my ridiculous shadow, wagging like the tail of some lazy dog, and I cannot help but laugh at myself as I move to the bed.

This is where she comes to me, this is where we are one. I run my hand along the neat lines of the bed, the only thing in this whole flat that is neat and tidy any longer. Today, there are clean sheets on the bed. Cool and smooth. I luxuriate in their feel against my skin as I slide beneath the covers and stretch my arms and legs, joints popping with the tense anticipation and hope that I will see her again, spreading through me.

It’s day outside right now.  Sunlight peeks around the heavy curtain and threatens to keep me awake. I hear the distant and constant rumble of traffic, and I listen to people talking to one another as they pass by my window. I try to put it out of my mind. I close my eyes, and these distractions begin to fade away one by one. I concentrate, instead, upon the girl of my dreams.

She is never the same twice. She comes like mist in the shadows of your dream, ever changing, always wonderful. I never truly see her, I feel her. She is everything and nothing to me. If you try to hold onto her, she vanishes like smoke. I know it’s her, every time, though she never feels the same, never smells the same, never tastes the same.

She’s Page 3 of The Sun; she’s a rap star’s music video. She’s Nancy from primary school, who was the first to get breasts. She’s Helen with the short skirt from science class, who made you fail your tests.  She’s every lover you have ever had or ever wanted, everyone you knew, imagined or wanted. Every film star, every pretty stranger on the train, everything you ever desired. If you’re strong, she gives way, soft and fluid beneath you, warm and wet and eager to please, worshipping you with her flesh. If you hesitate, she takes. She can be demanding and forceful if that’s what you desire. She places your hands on her body, tells you how to touch, how to lick, what to take, and she mounts you with abandoned and shameless ease in a way that no other woman can.

She’ll indulge any fantasy, do anything you want, push your limits and let you be who you really are, even if you don’t know who you are or what you want. She’ll push you to, and then over the edge. She’ll catch you and forgive you for anything you’ve done. She doesn’t care.

My cock aches, uncomfortable now with all these thoughts racing in my head. My flesh tents the sheet, the cool bordering on painful against my swollen glans as I twitch with every heartbeat against the fabric. I turn, lying on my side instead, that girthy length slapping against my thigh. I try to relax, try to be calm, to ignore the yearning need that sits in my stomach like a rock, making my balls feel leaden.

All of me is fixed, focused, concentrated on that ache between my legs, on the throbbing weight that presses back against my belly, but I close my eyes and try to clear my thoughts. I start to count down from a hundred, eyes closed, lips gently moving, letting my limbs grow heavy, breathing slow and steady and pressing my head deeper into the pillows.

Somewhere I lose count, and then she’s there, in the velvet shadow of the dream. There’s nothing but blackness, and yet I can feel her presence; I know she’s there.

Her hands slide around me from behind, slender fingers play over my skin, and I ease back against her. She’s soft, but slender, the heat of her belly presses against my rump, and her thigh caresses my hip as she winds around me, soft and gentle as silk. I feel her breath against my neck, then her lips, parted perfectly, slide along my chin, and she peppers my chest with kisses, her fingertips tracing the ancient patterns of need and adoration across my skin.

I feel her breasts, soft and smooth as they sway against my chest, and my excitement rises. I draw her before me with sudden strength and feel her curves. Her breasts swell into my hands, heavier, rounder, arched up with her back; there’s a gasp that I sense rather than hear. Turgid, thick nipples press to my palms as I bear her down into the blackness with a force that surprises me, but not her. She knows me better than I know myself. She plays to me, arching and opening her body to me until I push and claim her, clutching her flesh to mine as the hot, buttery heat of her swallows me whole and takes me deep within her.

She laughs, she clutches, she pulls. I feel her hair as I drive into her and bury my face in her neck. Her legs twine around me, her heels pull at my hips, drawing me deeper. I cannot see her, but I can feel her in my mind’s eye. She is dark tonight, heavy, rich, curved, exotic and sweet. She is molasses, she is caramel, she is oil beneath me. There are no words; words are unnecessary between us. She burns like fire, and her nails dig into my hips, as she hisses and her body rises to meet me, tells me all I’ll ever need to know.

I don’t make love to her.

We don’t fuck.

I take her, and she possesses me.

I dive into her and lose myself in her. I let myself vanish into arms, her legs, her ample bosom. Her breasts smother me, and I bite and suckle at their tender curves. My body moves until we’re soaked with sweat, until the unshaped darkness around us is dripping from our heat. I can feel her body grasp me, I can smell the scent of jasmine rising from her flesh, mingling with the honey-sweetness of her matchless cunt.

We turn and twist, our bodies one. One moment, she is beneath me on her back, the next on her hands and knees, lifting her body to mine like an animal. We tangle and untangle, writhe and twist, knot our limbs, our hands, our bodies into one.

I roll, and she rides me now, clutching my hands, bracing against them. Her hips in a deep, writhing roll that I have only felt once in my waking life. The most perfect sensation I have ever felt. She is glorious, she is everything, she is all I ever want. If only this moment could last forever.

Already I feel her slipping away, becoming less real, less substantial. Our union takes on a desperation with that revelation, clutching heat as her body tries to anchor mine. There’s a speed, a passion, a force that we’ve never had with each other before. Her nails dig harder into the backs of my hands and draw blood, not that I care. My hips rise and buck to those churning, broad hips, fierce with the need for release, grimacing like a beast beneath her.

I’ve never cum inside her. She swallows me, she tugs the straining ropes of seed from me into the darkness, she takes my passion on her belly, her breasts, her back, lets me mark her mine. She never, ever lets me fill her.

Until now.

Now her hips push down until I can be no deeper, we’re so close we’re one flesh. Her cunt clenches my cock like a fist, and she kisses me, hard, upon the mouth.

Time stops.

She tastes like whisky; smoky, hot, sweet. Her lips are like fire, her tongue electric. I feel like I’m engulfed within her, rooted within her, that nothing exists for her but me.

The Gordian knot in my belly, insoluble to anyone but her, is slashed. The weight, the tension I’ve been carrying and resisting unfurls, unleashes and unwinds in a sudden explosion, and I strain upwards, crying my joy into her mouth as my cock leaps inside her with a muscular jerk. Gush upon gush, I empty myself into her, giving her my all, straining to wring every drop, every iota of my desire into her body, to show her my adoration with nothing but my cum. I rise so hard, so desperate that her body is nearly thrown from me, her knees digging into my sides as she holds onto me oh-so-hard.

She lays her panting body against me as time starts again, skin tacking to skin, keeping us one. She’s smaller now, petite, almost girlish. She’s curled upon my chest like a kitten, kissing and licking the beads of sweat from my chest as though my cum had not been enough. I can barely feel her now. She’s becoming insubstantial, fading into the darkness, becoming a part of it again, slipping away from me. My heart aches at the parting as she fades with one last kiss, and my sleep-gummed eyes open to the dim shade of my room again.

I blink, trying to clear my eyes and focus. I lay on my back, staring up in the half-light at the crinkled curves of my ceiling. The sheets are dry, but I feel drained and spent, satisfied for this precious moment, but my cock and my belly are wet, sticky, hot. My hand slides down, and my finger runs along the slick length of me before it draws back out.

I smell jasmine.

I taste her.

She is.

Sci-Fi Pulp: Tessa Coyle, Science Police

Posted by Grim Jim on

This is an early first draft of the first part of this story, you can find it and the rest of my neo-pulp stories in the collection Pulp Nova, available at Lulu.

Boop-dee-dee-beep-deep-woop, boop-dee-dee-beep-deep-woop.

Tessa groaned and wound the sheets around her head, hoping the noise would go away, but it wouldn’t, the clamorous ring of her TeleBand just keep going and going, the greenish light of its screen flashing as it strove to get her attention. She fumbled her arm out of the mummified cocoon of her sheets and groped for her glasses on the bedside fresher, fumbling them onto her face and falling with a thump onto the floor as she writhed like some bizarre linen caterpillar across the floor to the Teleband.

Cold metal and worn leather were felt against her fingertips and she sat up, the sheet falling around her slender, shirt-covered body as she hit the answer button and squinted through the thumbprint on her glasses at the tri-d, metal face that appeared, hovering, over her wristband.

“Maam.”

It was Robur, her partner, a 41st interation 124C model Metalman, not very lifelike, but an effective partner and a good ‘man’ to have on your side in a fight.

“Robur… you do understand that humans have to sleep right? I have to get eight hours natural a week rather than hypersleep or I’m no good to anyone.” Tessa pulled up the hem of her nightshirt and wiped the lens of her glasses so she could see more clearly. He was just a Metalman, he wouldn’t care about a little flashed skin.

“I am sorry maam but Captain Newton was most insistant that I contact you. We have a Code Prometheus incident at the BioVat facility on the corner of Gernsback and Capek. The proctors are containing it at the moment but they want Science Police on site as soon as possible.”

Robur’s voice became more and more annoying the longer he spoke for, that grating buzz of an artificial voicebox was especially irritating before coffee and breakfast.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can Robur. Have the proctors set up a perimeter one block around BioVat and deploy Mag Screens for containment. I’m on my way.”

Tessa slapped the TeleBand and cut him off, stepping up out of the cocoon of sheets and peeling off her nightshirt.

“Lights!”

The daybulbs glowed dimly and slowly built up to full brightness as she crossed the room to get her uniform. She paused a moment and wrinkled her nose at the sight of herself in the mirror. Short curly hair, Buddy-Holly glasses, a figure so slim and boyish that if it wasn’t for the way her hips moved everyone would think she was a man. She was strong though, despite being slight, flexible and fast and – most importantly – brilliant. They’d wanted her to go into research, her parents, but the Science Police was where it was at, safeguarding the advances of others and protecting the city from the terrors that lay beyond the dome.

Tessa pulled on her foil cap and stepped into the ion shower. There was a hum and a tingle as the electric stream and a gust of air blew away the top layer of dead skin cells and she hopped back out, pulling on her uniform. Royal blue trousers a size too big for her, a black blouse and white tie, her gunbelt with its ionic pistol and her long white lab coat. Lastly she strapped her Science Police band to her other wrist and checked herself in the mirror. It would do.

Tessa threw open the window and stepped out onto the balcony, pressing the button on her TeleBand to summon a police disk. Below her the whole of Science City Zero was laid out, a glittering panorama of lights and sounds, the shining beacons of cars, planes, disks and balloons. The spires of the banded towers, the web of their skywalks and transit tubes. Above it all the great arch of the dome, the night sky barely seen beyond it, only The Moon bright enough to compete with the scintillating, kaleidoscopic glow of the city.

The disk arrived, swooping up to her balcony on dim pencil beams of force. Tessa leapt aboard and swept down over the city, heading as fast as she dared towards the incident.

***

Tessa swept down out of the sky and jumped from the disk, leaving it to flit its way to another appointment with a sudden surge in velocity. Fishing in her pockets she popped a caffeine and a breakfast pill from her dispenser and strode purposefully up to the line of proctors, waving to Robur as she did so.

“Ah, greetings Maam.” The Metalman waved to her, his chassis gleaming beneath the daybulb streetlights, all burnished blue-steel and armoured rivets. He was surrounded by proctors in their heavy armour, lightning guns in their hands as the finished establishing their perimeter.

“Report?”

“The cordon has been thrown around as you requested, the incident appears to be contained but there is ongoing violence within the BioVat building. Spy-Ray examination reveals several unidentified hominid-like forms and several scientists inside, perhaps hostages. There’s interference from the fires and electrical shorts, so that information is only seventy-percent accurate, for which I apologise.”

Tessa turned to the proctor captain, looking up, her neck aching as she looked into his faceless helmet.

“We’ve surrounded the building with ten megawatt energy screens and have deployed three units in a cordon around the building, there to back you up should things go pear-shaped maam. Captain Newton has ordered us to cooperate fully, but we’re only to enter at your behest.”

Tessa popped another caffeine pill, she had a feeling she’d need it. As she swallowed she unbuckled her holster and hoisted out her ionic pistol, checking the charge and the settings, nodding to Robur to do the same.

“What do we know about BioVat Robur?”

“Independent biological research and development company maam. They research into synthetic life but their bread and butter is creating synth-men for biological experimentation.”

“Brainless clones for medical research… who’d attack a medical facility?” Tessa scowled and marched up to the line, gesturing the proctor on duty to take this screen down when they went through. Robur pulled his own pistol and stood beside her.

“Three, two, one…”

The crackling screen faded out with a low buzz and the two ran forward, the light slap of her All-Stars contrasting with the heavy clank-clank of Robur’s feet. He wasn’t exactly stealthy. The screen came back up behind them, sealing the area behind an impenetrable screen of force and they slammed up against the wall, either side of the door.

“Ready?”

Robur’s steely head nodded, once, the glow behind his eyes intensifying and then he stepped around, kicking the revolving door out of its housing and sending it sliding violently across the foyer to smash the reception desk to smithereens.

Inside it was chaos, full of smoke, fires burning here and there, showers of sparks as cabling burned and shorted. The ground was slippery with a pinkish goo and the cause was readily apparent. Deformed, cancerous, muscles ballooned to ridiculous proportions, the synth-men had broken free of their containers. Twisted, like hairless gorillas, veins pulsing, rage in their eyes, the handful in the entrance turned their incoherent anger on the interlopers and leapt to the attack.

“Does not compute!” Robur cried with what sounded like genuine anguish. “Synth-men have no brains… no conciousness!”

“Worry about that later!” Tessa darted inside, sliding on a slick of the pinkish goo and ducking under the tree-trunk arm of one of the synth-men. Her ionic pistol hummed in her hand as she twisted, sliding on her bottom across the chequered floor and firing, a blue beam of coherent electricity striking the synth-man and hurling him to the far wall with the stink of ozone and bacon.

The remaining synth-men bounded and leapt, roaring like jungle apes as they moved. Tessa scrambled out of the way as one landed on the spot where she had just been. Thanking blind chance that she was as small and slight as she was. Where it landed the floor cratered, muscle so dense it must have weighed twice as much as it should and been in unspeakable agony, crushed by its own muscles. Robur shot the other out of the air deftly with his pistol, playing his beam across the creature’s chest until he was sure it was still.

By then the third had gotten its meaty paw upon Tessa and had her by the ankle, hauling her upside down before it’s face, ape-like fangs bared as it roared, spattering her glasses with spittle. There was a crash nearby as Robur slammed into the remaining synth-man before he could recover, bearing him down to the ground and pounding his neanderthal brow with fists like hammers while Tessa twisted and struggled.

Blinded by the spit she felt its other hand grasp her around her head, the span of its fingers sufficient to pluck her cranium from her spine as though it were plucking a grape. She tried to calm herself, to remember her scientific boxing lessons and then she lashed out with all the strength she could muster, slamming two of her knuckles one side of the synth-man’s head and the butt of her pistol the other, just between the ear and the jaw.

The creature roared and dropped her, she landed awkwardly on her shoulders and back, upside down, lifting the ionic pistol and blindly firing between the creature’s legs. The roar became a howl, high pitched almost beyond hearing and this time the ozone stink was mixed with burning hair as the thing dropped like a felled tree.

The bone-crunching noises of Robur’s fight also came to a halt and he strode over to help her up.

“Are you alright maam?”

“No thanks to you. Why didn’t you attack the one that had me?”

“I knew you could handle it maam, within a ninety-three percent probability anyway. Taking the remaining problem out of the equation seemed the best course of action.”

“There’ll be others, we need to get to the lab where the spy-ray saw the scientists.”

They nodded to each other and ascended the stairs two and three at a time, heading back through the offices, blasting left and right as more of the synth-men emerged from the side rooms, blinded by pain and rage there was nothing they could do but put them down.

“This is monstrous, whoever did this is a sociopath.” Tessa growled as they stood back to back, blasting away at the tide of muscle that dogged their every step, climbing over the bodies of dead office workers and the remnants of destroyed desks as they finally got back to the factory doors.

They burst through and slammed the metal doors shut behind them, standing on the gantry that lead to the control chamber, beneath them a sea of tubes, many of them broken, filled with the pink plasm that supported the synth-men growth, but there was only one inside. A brute bigger than any other they had seen, towering over the cowering scientists in the control room.

“Hold the fort Robur, I’m going to get the scientists.”

The Metalman nodded and slid his arms through the handles, bracing back against the door as it rang like a bell, massive fists hammering from the other side, roars and snarls of frustrated as the iron and steel of robot and door refused to give, though it began to dent.

The hulking synth-man turned, one eye massive and yellow, larger than the other, one whole side of its body larger than the other. Clumsily it turned and loped towards her as she marched towards it, ionic pistol raised.

“Science Police, surrender to impartial justice!” She gave the warning, even though she knew it couldn’t understand. The body of a monster and the mind of a newborn.

Predictably, it ignored her and began to run, a lopsided lope towards her.

Behind her Robur channelled his own power into his chassis, electrifying himself and the door, shocking the synth-men hammering on the other side to death, his whole body arched and glowing, heating up from the power coursing through him.

For her part Tessa kept marching on the giant synth-man, depressing the firing stud on her pistol, the blue coruscating light struck the creature full in the chest, burning its flesh, charring its skin, but still it kept on coming, teeth bared, marching into the ravening beam as though walking into the wind.

Tessa stared, disbelieving as the massive creature came closer, closer, closer and reached into the beam, burning off one of its own fingers to snatch the pistol from her hand. It grinned in triumph as it crushing it like a drinks can in its maimed fist but Tessa didn’t miss a beat, swinging her leg back, then forward and planting the very toe of her boot into the mass of dangling flesh between the things legs. It grunted and she grasped, and pivoted, using its own off-centre weight to hurl it from the gantry to plummet to its broken-necked doom amongst the shattered tubes below.

The fight was over, the scientists in shock and useless as witnesses. They called in the proctors to guide them out and put out the fires, that left them free to look over the control room without interference. It was a wreck, a mess, evidence was hard to come by in such a disruption of blood and wreckage, but they divided it up into sections and went through it methodically, despite Tessa’s aches and pains. This was where a Metalman came into his own, they couldn’t experience boredom and his mechanical precision was an inspiration.

It was Tessa that found it though, breaking open the feeder mechanism to the MONOVAC she ran her fingers down the mass of punch-cards and felt the hard edges of newer cards inserted into the sequence.

“What do you make of these Robur?” She plucked the newer cards out of the feeder, tucking torn pieces from her notebook into the gaps to mark the spaces.

The Metalman took the cards and fed them into his universal slot, shuffling them like a stage magician as they flew into his slot and his tubes and switches cogitated with a noisy flickering, digesting the information.

“They’re plasm codes maam. I am no expert but according to my interior library these sequences relate to muscle, bone and nerve tissue growth, including brain tissue. I conjecture that…”

“…someone introduced a little Mr Hyde into our mindless Doctor Jeckylls.”

“Indeed maam.”

“So then, there’s no question.”

“None at all maam.”

Tessa tossed the remaining punch cards angrily onto the floor, spilling them everywhere, kicking the pile so it fell between the slats in the gantry and turning back to Robur, stabbig her finger into his impassive face.

“Sabotage!”

SLA Industries Ficlet: Back from the White

Posted by Grim Jim on

She blinked as her eyes swam back into focus, dancing lights, motes and colours like a bad Alice flashback, greens and purples and reds as the light faded away and was replaced by darkness. Above her the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral slowly gathered enough effort to regain its edges and solidity. Black-and-green, shining and chitinous, oily, the Dark Lament cathedral resembled nothing less than ten thousand priapic beetles locked in an orgiastic embrace.

Faint light filtered through the web-window of stained resin, and she lifted her hand into it, fascinated for a moment by the dancing mote of dust caught in a beam of muted light that she never would have seen before. Her hand came back to wipe the tears from her eyes.

Her blackened claw came away bloody.

She could hear a half-hundred hearts – not beating.

She could smell four dozen emotions, a patchwork of tension, fighting for dominance in the vaulted space.

She could feel every rib and spar of the sternum-and-knuckle carapace beneath her body, every slight gush of air was like a hundred cigarettes stubbed out upon her raw and bloodied flesh.

It made her thighs tense; it made her wet.

She could taste the copper tang of vitality in her mouth, teeth like razors cutting her own tongue, but something else, something fatty, something sweet.

She forced herself to sit up, to pay attention, to think, to concentrate. She felt, rather than saw, the others around her. The world receded like a dream; it didn’t seem genuine compared to how she felt. Compared to the others around her. They were somehow more real, more firm, fixed points in space and time, pulsing with the power of The White, the same power that flowed through her.

A shadow loomed as she staggered to her feet like a newborn foal, and from a hundred mouths the eater-of-souls spoke a singular chorus of welcome.

“ONEone. OFof. USus.”

Her head threw back in an ecstatic scream of exultation, and her wings spread behind her in a great black arch.

She was REAL.

SLA Industries Ficlet: Standard Procedure

Posted by Grim Jim on

“The Necanthrope is, besides money, the most powerful weapon in SLA’s arsenal,” the drill sergeant barked, marching up and down in front of the recruits. “It is also their weakness, a mark of their reliance on the strange, the unknown. A living metaphor and symbol for SLA itself, either ugly as sin, a ravaging terror, or a beautiful and beguiling lie. Take down a Nec, and you’re taking down a symbol of SLA.”

The suit was in pieces back there, torn, burnt, frozen, shattered, even a powersuit wasn’t built to take that kind of punishment all at once but she managed to escape, crawling out the back into the rubble and debris while ceramic melted like wax and metal caught fire, bullets cooking off like popcorn. The inner suit, gashed and leaking coolant, wasn’t any protection worth a damn, but better that than naked.

“Rule one when fighting one of these unnatural bastards… don’t get out of your suit. They’ll eviscerate you, boil you, freeze you solid, rain acid down upon you until you’re nothing but bone and a bad smell. You’ll only be able to stand up to them – toe to toe – in the heaviest armour you can find.”

She clutched her pistol so tight her hand bled, squirming through the shattered concrete like a worm, a pale maggot, leaving a slick trail of coolant behind her, cocking her head, listening, his heavy clawed tread was crushing the debris even more, wearing it down like it had worn the armour down.

“Rule two, heavy weapons. You need a cannon or something fully automatic at the very least. DPU is a must when taking on this opponent. Get your weapons laced with it, make sure you have a mag or drum of the good stuff in reserve, just in case. Not a lot else is going to get through a high-end deathsuit, and you know they’re going to have more than that to defend themselves with.”

Gouts of light and flame were blasting into the rubble now, sending red-hot fragments scattering in all directions. It was looking for her, toying with her, playing with her; it wasn’t taking her seriously. It was kind of insulting, but it made sense. What kind of threat was she now?

“Rule three, don’t. If you can at all avoid it, do not engage with these sons of whores. Leave it to some other poor fuck or hit them from orbit.”

Ah, screw it… what did the sarge know? She’d escaped, she was underestimated, and she had the element of surprise? What was the worst that could happen?

She cocked the gun, slipped off the safety, and tensed…

…and sprang.

The Black Rat: Something Special (Sample chapter)

Posted by Grim Jim on

The Black Rat is a vigilante pulp story, a sort of ‘working class Batman’, from my collection Pulp Nova. You can purchase Pulp Nova at Lulu.com. This is an early draft of the first chapter of that story.

The two lads marched down the street, swinging their shoulders, cans of beer in their hands and long tartan scarves flowing out behind them, sloshing beer in their exuberance and shouting at the top of their lungs.

“B-A-Y, B-A-Y, B-A-Y C-I-T-Y, With an R-O-double-L, E-R-S, Bay City Rollers are the best!”

“SHUT UP!” Came a hoarse holler from further down the street, the shape of a naked, beer-bellied man silhouetted by a dim, flickering yellow light. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”

“Fuck of you wanker!” The lads shouted back in unison and then ducked into a side alley together, one of them stopping at the mouth to watch the street while the other vanished back into the dark and yanked a can of spray paint out of his pocket, spraying the wall, writing out the name of his idols one giant letter at a time.

He’d just finished the ‘Y’ when he stumbled against something in the dark, fumbling out his lighter and flicking it on, casting a shaky light over the alley. Half – or more – of the street lights were out; it was the only way to see, but you could get away with a lot in the dark. Swings and roundabouts.

The dancing flame revealed a pile of newspaper and cardboard, but there was something underneath it, something heavy that wouldn’t shift. He crouched down, curious, and threw back the card and paper back out of the way, falling back with a little girly shriek as the light revealed the battered black face of a corpse.

“There’s a dead wog back here, Derek!”

The other lad came scrambling back and took out his pocket torch, flicking it on and playing it over the corpse. “Fuck me… check his wallet Alan.”

With the torchlight playing over the body, Alan crouched down and started to rummage through the corpse’s clothes, plucking out his wallet. “Christ alive, there’s a Henry and at least a couple of ponies in here.”

“and i am quite certain his family would like both back, if, indeed, they are his.” The voice was strange, quiet, muffled, but it had a way of cutting clean across your perception, right through the sound of traffic and the huffed breaths of the two youths.

They turned, as one, towards the end of the alley, and Derek’s torch played over a strange figure. He wasn’t tall, perhaps five seven, five eight at the most. He was dressed entirely in black from top to bottom, a ragged figure in black leather jeans and a tattered old trench coat with a high collar. Even his hands were covered with black gloves. The only colour they could see was gleaming red circles in the dark like demonic eyes, but they weren’t, they were lenses, lenses on a gas mask.

“Who the fuck is this spaz?” Alan stood tall; now he’d recovered from the surprise. Stepping towards the strange man at the mouth of the alley.

“what’s wrong with you that you’d steal from a corpse? What’s wrong with you that you’d have no respect for this poor, dead man?”

“What’s wrong with you that you give a fuck you weird-lookin’ nonce?” Alan stepped up to him and reached out to shove the short man’s shoulder, unsettled by his strange appearance and wanting to feel strong in front of his friend.

The man in black twisted with the shove and balled his left hand into a fist, bringing it hard across Alan’s jaw. It hit him like a steam train, the glove weighted with lead filings. There was a crunch from his face, and teeth parted company with jaw as he was bodily flung into the wall of the alley, spitting enamel and giving a strange, gurgling, bloody scream as he slumped to the ground, clutching his ruined mouth.

“Keep the fuck back from me!” Derek stumbled away, keeping the torch on the man as he slowly walked towards him, fumbling in his back pocket for his switchblade, clicking it open and holding it out threateningly in his shaking hand.

“you really don’t want to do that.” The man pushed back his jacket to reveal a dark leather belt around his waist from which hung a half dozen ‘holsters’ each a different shape.

“Is that a utility belt? Do you think you’re Adam West or something?” Derek laughed nervously, stepping forward, jabbing threateningly with the knife.

The man feinted right with his fist, and Derek slashed at him with the blade, scraping across leather, only to get his wrist snatched in the man’s other hand. He wasn’t big, but he was stron,g and Derek was slammed against the back wall, his arm held in that iron grip as the man unbuckled one ‘holster’ with a fluid motion, snatching out a hammer and smashing it into Derek’s hand, shattering small bones and making him keen like a banshee.

“no, it’s a tool belt.”

The red-eyed man in black handcuffed the two men together – no points in wasting cuffs – and left them clinging to each other, weeping and swearing around their wounds and the blood, taking what comfort they could from each other.

Leaving them to their misery, he stepped over to the body and respectfully uncovered it, pushing back his sleeve and playing dim red lights over it, plucking up the discarded wallet for a look at it. There was something off about this: the money, the drugs, the way he’d been killed.

The body was covered in long, straight bruises, clustered around the top of his body. A tentative touch confirmed broken, floating ribs, found swollen and bruised flesh, a softness here and there on the man’s skull where the bone had been cracked and shattered. The man had been systematically beaten to death over the course of some time.

The man in black peeled back the gas mask, just up over his nose and his mouth, revealing a broad, bristled chin as he leaned down to sniff at the corpse.

“ganj, so he was a dealer after all,” he murmured to himself, pulling the mask back down and turning back to the wallet. Something didn’t add up.

Opening it up there wasn’t much in there, just some cards and paper; the only notes were crisp and new. The drugs, an eighth of an ounce of marijuana resin, were in a brand spanking new plastic bag, way too large for the small amount of drugs that were there. Something was absolutely, definitely, off.

There wasn’t time right now to think it through; there was the roar of an engine and the squeal of tyres. The man in black darted his head around, the red lenses of his mask darkening in the suddenly harsh light of the beams. The doors flew open, and heavy shoes slammed down on the pavement. He scrambled back away from the bod,y but the alley stopped in a dead end, the heavy closed door at the back of a chippy.

“’Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello…” laughed one of the coppers as they strolled up towards him, hand thrust into his pocket, pushing through the sling on his truncheon and dragging it out, slapping it into his palm while his partner hung back a bit.

“i don’t want to hurt you, but i will if i have to.”

“Are you threatening a police officer, squire?” His partner was paying attention now, taking out his own truncheon, the pair of them blocking the whole exit.

“Christ…” said the copper at the back, spotting the rollers and the state they were in. “A body and two beatings? Off to an early start today, this evening aren’t we, Sir?” The two police officers looked to each other, and their demeanour changed subtly.

“body?” The penny dropped. Nobody would have managed to get word out about the body yet. They’d barely even looked down the alley yet. They knew. They knew already. They’d always known. “what I said earlier? I’ve changed my mind.”

He pressed back against the chippy door and braced his boot against it before springing forward towards them. They met halfway down the alley, and he brought up his arms, twisting side to side, blocking one truncheon blow with his arm, the other smacking into his belly with a solid thump that surprised the copper who swung it.

That was his chance, snapping out with his fist and spreading the officer’s nose across his face, sending him sprawling with his cap flipping through the air to fall to the dirt. That was all he needed. Now there was space to run, where there were a couple of cops, there’d likely be more, especially if they knew about the corpse.

The man in black hunkered down and ran, heavy boots denting the bonnet of the Rover as he leapt up and over it, ragged leather coat streaming out behind him as he ran, the remaining cop in pursuit, dropping behind him as he wove through the darkened streets at breakneck pace, knowing them like the back of his hand.

When the policeman came to another alleyway and shone his torch down it, there was no sign of the man in black. It was empty, nothing but a manhole cover and a piece of card fluttering to the floor.

A piece of card with a sketch of a rat and the words “i know,” scrawled upon it.

Why did you write Colony: Moon?

Posted by grimachu on

I was born in 1975. I’m starting to finally feel like a grown-up, which must mean I’m old. We stopped going to the moon in 1972 but when I was growing up I was surrounded by books and pictures talking about all our accomplishments in space and it wasn’t really conceivable that we wouldn’t go back there. That was a slow dream to die and the books I read were optimistic, talking about a Moon base by the late 1980s or mid 1990s.

Now the US doesn’t even have the Space Shuttle any more and the only sign of any vision is coming from private companies and film makers, and that’s strange and a rather modest vision at that.

Projects like getting out into space are like ITER, or CERN, they really need to be international efforts due to the cost and expertise required. While there is money to be made – potentially – in space, it feels like we’re mortgaging our future to the profit motive, rather than the wonder, and necessity, of taking to the solar system and the stars.

I wanted to make a game about competing ideas, negotiation, the risks in being unfocussed and the strengths in working together. The game really relies on people taking on a ‘role’ and playing it through, making a mix of political and pragmatic decisions.

I think it could, easily, also form the background and basis for someone’s hard SF RPG and I hope it sells well so I can do some rules and add ons for colonising the rest of the solar system, and beyond.

Colony: Moon RELEASED

Posted by grimachu on

A cooperative (or competetive) story game about founding a Moon colony, making it succeed and opening up the way to the rest of the solar system.

Players take on the parts of ‘The Board’ and make decisions about the future of the colony, expending political capital and gaining prestige when their plans work.

PDF

Hardcopy

This game will be available at Paizo, IPR and E23 shortly, if those are your preferred outlets.